Monologue of Death

Death

I have been wrongfully accused. I am hated by almost everyone and cursed everywhere I go. I am held responsible for some of the most terrible things experienced by communities, families, and lovers. They blame me for the crimes of others, the crimes of stupidity, and the crimes of fate. They say I am the enemy of hope and love, and I happen to be friends of both. I have a job like everyone else; I perform the same task day in and day out like the rest of you. I am just a necessary as the garbage man, more necessary than the garbage man actually even though we perform the same basic function. Do you blame him that you peeled a banana and have thrown out the peel; is he scorned for taking it to where it’s supposed to be?... Although if I am the garbage man what does that make you; I am Death, I come to you all. With out me Life could never be reborn. It would linger and stagnate. I am the effect not the cause. If a person is caught in an avalanche or drowns is that may fault. Yes I have come but not of my own will, I am as trapped as the souls who call me. Did you know I’ve never seen a birthday? I’ve never seen a wedding, never seen love; only grief, only the last lingering moments at the tail end of a life. I only see the aftermath, the despair, the loneliness; I’ve watched the eyes of a person filled with desperation and horror while they watch their lover slip away in a hospital bed. I’ve watched children shaking their parents, begging for them to wake up, to young to comprehend the image of a bullet riddled body, and yet even they understand me, they know death when they see it; what irony, that ones so young could not understand a lover’s kiss, and yet they know me. The thing that you people take for granted is staggering. What do I know of food? I know what it is to watch your child choke to death of a piece of meat; I know what it is to scream silently in desperation as your face turns blue and everything fades into the horrifying darkness. I know nothing of love, all I know is what it is to lose love in the most horrific fashions, to be betrayed by lovers. And sex does nothing but disgust me; the endless shrieks of dying agony from thousands of raped women will ring in my ears for eternity. Every time I close my eyes I can see the life slipping from theirs, the horror reflected by them, their last experience in life, frozen in my mind for all of time. Through everything I’ve witnessed I will tell you the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. I was called into a house, I entered the bedroom and I saw an old woman lying in the arms of her husband. They looked up at me when I entered and smiled and she said, “We’ve been waiting for you.” And then they turned to one another, and they kissed each other, and then I took them both. The closest thing I have ever come to experiencing love was witnessing the sparkle in their eyes when they looked at one another, that sparkle still shines, a tiny light in the darkness. It really should be me who hates you. But that single moment in a vast ocean of horror, grief, and anguish keeps me from that. Even Death has hope, hope of freezing another moment of love in time, and perhaps this time I’ll understand what love is.